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Thursday, May 05, 2011

Joe Catholic

Years ago I tried to form a men's small faith group in our parish and it failed. Year after year some guy would come up to me after Mass and ask me when we were going to bring back the "Joseph's group." I smiled nicely and said we'll see, knowing well I was not interested in another failure. Two years ago I relented and invited some of the male leaders in our church to discuss revamping the group. (This idea was founded on Maxwell's Law of Explosive Growth). We kicked around format ideas and settled on a new name - Joe Catholic. I got the idea from Joe Plumber and the fact that I wanted to promote that we were just ordinary guys trying to learn our faith.

Joe Catholic now meets the first Saturday of each month, bright and early at 7:00AM. Over forty men have attended at least one gathering and we consistently have fifteen or so at each get together. We have settled on a three prong format: Catholic Toolbox, Saint Talk and FAQ of Faith. Each session lasts about 15-20 minutes and they are non-sequential by design. We maintain a casual environment encouraging men to show up late if they have to and leave when they need to. The bottom line is that we want to help men develop in their faith.

Last year, Bishop Kevin Vann invited us to the Fort Worth cathedral (St. Patrick) to celebrate mass with him and subsequently to present one of our meetings to him. I was proud.

The Joe Catholic blog serves to supplement the gatherings with resources for deeper study of the Catholic faith.

NOTE ON THE LOGO: The artisan's toolbox represents that we are all working men living ordinary lives. The green book is the Catechism of the Catholic Church representing that we are loyal to the Church's teachings. The black book is the Holy Bible to represent that we are men of the Word of God. The Rosary represents that we are men of prayer. The hammer and rule are representative of traditional symbols of St. Joseph - the original Joe Catholic.